Abuse After Bernardin

Abuse After Bernardin

Churches must learn from the cardinal’s example and policies before the next sex-abuse charges are leveled.

Last fall, former seminary student Stephen J. Cook, 34, accused a highly respected Catholic prelate, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, of sexually abusing him at age 17. Last month, Cook, who is dying of AIDS, asked the federal court to dismiss his $10 million molestation suit. While this is clearly a personal and professional vindication for Bernardin, the issue of sexual abuse by clergy is serious, and Protestants would do well to learn from his example.

Charges of sexual misconduct against clergy in Protestant and Catholic churches are rising. Ten years ago it was almost unheard of for a Catholic priest to be charged with sexually molesting boys. Now there are new cases regularly. In a survey of evangelical pastors published by LEADERSHIP in 1988, 12 percent admitted they had engaged in sexual intercourse outside of marriage since being in local-church ministry, and 23 percent acknowledged some other form of inappropriate sexual contact while in local ministry. Baptist counselor Roy Woodruff, executive director of the 3,000-member American Association of Pastoral Counselors, estimates that 15 percent of clergy “have or are violating sexual ethical boundaries. I don’t think I would use the word ‘epidemic,’ but I suspect the number of incidents is increasing.”

Tragically, most of those charged with sexual abuse turn out to be guilty, but some are innocent. Like Bernardin, they have been falsely accused. In Cook’s case, hypnosis was used to help him recall “repressed memories” of being abused.

While hypnosis and other therapies may be helpful, they are not foolproof. As Cook told the court in dismissing the suit, “Based on information I have learned since filing the lawsuit, I now realize that the memories which arose during and after hypnosis are unreliable.” Because even an accusation can severely tarnish an innocent pastor’s reputation, great care must be taken in how any charge is handled.

Ironically, Cardinal Bernardin had already put into place impressive measures to handle allegations of priestly misconduct. He had set up a hotline to encourage the confidential reporting of complaints, and he had appointed a review board—consisting of a majority of laypersons—to handle cases reported. Among the board’s members are a psychiatrist, a former victim, the director of a sexual dysfunction clinic, a parish council member, and a parent. Heading up this board is a former prosecutor of child-abuse cases. What’s more, a separate Victim Assistance Ministry is now helping victims of abuse by priests to rebuild their lives.

Churches slow to respond

Unfortunately, few of the 187 Catholic dioceses have bothered to implement similar programs, nor is there indication that Protestant churches and denominations are doing any better. If the church is serious about protecting its flock from abusive clergy (and protecting decent pastors from false accusations), some type of review procedure along the lines of the Chicago archdiocese’s review board is needed.

Beyond that, help must be offered to victims. The 4,500 members of Linkup, a national group of victims of Catholic priestly abuse, in most cases first brought their complaints to church officials to seek therapeutic help and the priest’s removal, not financial settlements. But many were treated as a threat and with suspicion, rather than as wounded people. Is it any wonder so many have decided to sue the church? A victim-assistance program—separate from the investigation procedure—not only offers much-needed healing to the victims, but discourages costly lawsuits against the church.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from Cardinal Bernardin’s ordeal is the spirit with which he handled it. Here is a man who had been a priest for 42 years with 26 years as a bishop, who was, in his words, “humiliated before the world.” His accuser had appeared on CNN television saying, “I want to see the church rid itself of this kind of vermin.”

Yet Bernardin did not respond in kind. “He continued to act as a churchman despite the destructive attack,” his attorney, James Serritella, said. “He did not want his defense conducted so as to discourage victims from coming forward.” Bernardin was within his rights to countersue, but he knew the message that would send to other actual victims: Keep quiet or you’ll face even more abuse. Instead, he demonstrated Jesus’ tough admonition to love and pray for our enemies: “I have prayed for him every day and will continue to do so,” Cardinal Bernardin said.

Regardless of whether the victim is an adult female or a young boy, when abuse occurs there is an abhorrent betrayal of trust that demands greater attention and action from church leaders and denominational policymakers. Better mechanisms should be developed to ferret out the guilty and provide compassionate help to the individual victims. Church leaders, lay and clergy, need to realize how church congregations themselves are also victims. Sensitive training and education is the first step at preventing abuse, a goal all Christians should support vigorously.

By Michael J. McManus, author of Marriage Savers.

Prolifers’ Long, Dark Night

In a year that has seen many discouragements for the pro-life movement, March 10 marked a particularly low point; it was the anniversary of the killing of abortionist David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida. When the pro-choice movement tragically gained a martyr, they gained another boost in the fashionability of their cause. And those of us who oppose both abortion and murder must once again wonder why God allows these setbacks to occur.

Consider last month’s festivities in Pensacola. Headlined by the popular rock group Pearl Jam, the pro-choice movement hosted a “Rock for Choice” concert, selling out the 10,000-seat auditorium. Meanwhile, across town youth pastor David Hutchinson struggled to pull off a “Positive Life” rally in a high-school auditorium. He wanted to show the world that pro-lifers are overwhelmingly committed to not killing anybody—unborn babies or abortionists—and want to help women find alternatives to abortion. A few hundred showed up.

The sigh that wells up in pro-life chests at this scenario feels familiar. Why are we always the small, weak, struggling movement? Why do we so often come off like nerds? Why can’t our leaders walk onto a stage to a burst of glittering lights while 10,000 applaud?

After 20 years of seeing success slip out of our grasp, maybe it is time to stop being surprised at the unfairness of it all. Maybe it is time to wonder if God has lessons for us to learn in this time of fasting from jubilant victory. While pro-lifers feel deeply that God loves the babies lost to abortion, we may have forgotten that God loves us just as much. We may not recognize that love because we tend to think of God as a pal, always trying to make us happy. We forget that he is our Father, who “disciplines whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb. 12:6).

For now, our chastisement seems to entail having to pay for a deadly mistake, having our words distorted and ridiculed, and seeing political victory repeatedly go to our opponents. It was, after all, within the power of God to give the pro-life movement easy, early victory within months of Roe v. Wade. We cannot say why he did not. But as the long years pass without the victory for which we have hoped, perhaps we ought to look for blessings we never thought to pray for: humility, broken pride, loss of trust in our own power.

These are not the kinds of blessings that make it to our prayer lists. We prefer the more utilitarian blessing of power to change things; power that is able to fix what is broken. Someone once said that when we imagine God dealing with the world, we think of a giant hammer driving a giant nail. This is, in fact, how God did heal his broken world, but he let that nail be driven into the hand of his Son.

When we dare to do God’s work, we enter into that same mystery: strength perfected in weakness, dying to self in order to live. Not that working in the pro-life movement is such a grand martyrdom. Most of us still live in comfortable homes with VCRs and microwaves; we vote and order out pizza. (That God has not exposed us to greater trials may indicate his estimation of our generation’s capacity for endurance.) But we should learn to call even our small taste of disappointment a blessing, just as Jesus did: “Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.… Blessed are you when men shall revile you and persecute you …” (Matt. 5:10–11).

Our story does not end at the point of loss and powerlessness, regardless of the celebration by our opponents in Pensacola. It ends at a banquet table, a gathering of joy. We may imagine that gathering, uniting pro-life laborers with all the babies they saved as well as with the babies they were unable to save. We may imagine people who shared the work in earthly life, old friends and strangers, talking about their work on earth done in the public eye and hidden in humble settings. And we can imagine them saying to each other with joyful amazement, “Remember how discouraged we were for a while?”

Throughout history, God has used the uncomfortable tools of rejection and persecution to change his people and to change his world. It was the path he chose, himself, on the cross. Should we not expect to travel that path as well?

By Frederica Matthewes-Green, director of Real Choices, a research project of the National Women’s Coalition for Life.

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